Taming Texas

Three years ago there was no Borger, Tex. Then from deep-driven pipes in Hutchinson County spurted oil. Today Borger is a city of 10,000, county seat of Hutchinson, a slovenly clutter sprawling over the prairie with a main street two miles long. In this motley oil town's brief career have been committed 40 murders, with not a single conviction. The killing of District Attorney John A. Holmes last month finally prodded Governor Dan Moody to declare martial law in Borger, to send in National Guardsmen of the 56th Cavalry Brigade under the command of Brigadier General Jacob F. Wolters.

Experienced cleanser and quieter of Texas towns is burly, bronzed General Wolters. After the War he took his rangy troopers to Galveston Island, there quelled a festering longshoremen's strike. Later he was sent to oil-booming Mexia (pronounced Mayhea) where bootleggers and guntoters had usurped municipal government. "Mopupus Jake" and his troopers drove the usurpers to the hills, followed them in airplanes, corralled them.

The Borger situation was similar to that in Mexia. City and county officials were conniving with scofflaws, winking at murders, sponsoring speakeasies and brothels. General Wolters supplanted the conniving officials with his Texas Rangers. Khaki-clad patrolmen directed traffic, policed the suddenly quiet streets. Drinkers no longer rioted in wide-open saloons but tippled alone at home behind locked doors. Bootleggers and daughters of joy, hearing the oldtime frontier command to "get out of town by sundown," scuttled away. The women barbers changed to clothes from pajamas.

Last week Borger was cleaned up. General Wolters, satisfied, left for Houston and his law practice. Said he: "Well, we finished the job at Borger. The Sheriff, the Mayor, the City Commissioners, the Justice of the Peace and the Constables resigned, and for good measure we took the resignation of an involved member of the legislature. . . . With the new officials whom we installed . . . Hutchinson County will be the tamest county in Texas. It was a great job. . . ."